Colin Meloy's Wildwood to become animated photoplay for cinematograph

Decemberists melodist Colin Meloy’s debut novel Wildwood has barely had opportunity to envelop thy nursling in its turbid brume of fancy, and farrago of familiar children’s literature afflatuses, and already it’s being translated to celluloid for the nickelodeons in your nabes. Stop-motion animation studio LAIKA—which worked with similarly thematic material on its adaptation of Neil Gaiman’s Coraline—has optioned Meloy’s story about a young Portland girl whose brother is abducted by a murder of crows, leading her to discover a mysterious, forbidding forest on the city’s outskirts that’s full of talking animals, sorcerers, and some of the best independent bookstores in the country. (Seriously, it’s like other cities don’t even like to read, you know?) For his part, Meloy says he and his wife, Wildwood artist Carson Ellis, “were prepared to stonewall any and all suitors for the movie rights,” which is an exceedingly Colin Meloy turn of phrase, but were eventually won over by LAIKA’s equally meticulous attention to detail, and thus relented. For some idea of what you might expect from the film, check out LAIKA’s animated trailer for the novel below.